The Beating of Billy Ray Johnson
On a Saturday night three years ago, a mentally disabled black man from Linden was taken to a party filled with white kids half his age. A few hours later, he was dumped by the side of the road, bleeding and unconscious. But of all the crimes that were committed, none was worse than how the small East Texas town responded—and who were considered the victims.
1 comment
Sunday, May 1st, 2011, 2:38 pm
Lee says:
I’m heartbroken by this story. As a black mother who has children it breaks my heart that I have to teach my children about things to this nature. I have a child who attends school in the Linden ISD and each week he has a new story to come and tell me about something that has occured at school. He recently made a comment about how he felt as if one of the teachers at school didn’t like blacks. He stated that a group of white children were playing together on the playground and when the black kids went to join in the the play they were all made to stand in timout by one of the teachers. So racism is still alive and well. I was speaking about a personal experience that I had encountered once and was told by a white lady that she has never experienced any racial behavior while attending school and my response to her was "why would you".
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